My "Saharagelber" 300TD

Departure 00:30 – Almere 96386km

Tonight is the night, we’re leaving, and a miracle, we’re finished with everything. The days before were like hell, but we ended up finished.
The last couple of days were quite stressful, buy all necessary books (Sahara overland, maps, Lonely Planets etc), insurances, carte grise, visa, vaccinations and things like that. The stress raised as the departure date approached. It was only yesterday that I arranged my international drivers license and international car papers.
At midnight we went off, in our Benz which was about to be both our transport and our home. Melissa and Ramon were sitting in the car and this remembered me of myself, sitting as a young boy in the back of my fathers car, when we went off for the holiday. Back then, I was jealous at my dad cause he was behind the wheel, now I am myself I started the engine and she started spinning. Running like a clock, 96386km on the meter. This year she had already hit 13000kms from the travels to Turkey and France this year.
We’re all in a fine travelmood, curious about what to expect. Saying goodbye to our families was difficult, but the only thing we can think of right now is adventure, so this makes it easier to bare. After some minutes we entered the high way, it was already very dark and we drove a hole in the night. I feel comfortable, driving in this very strong diesel from Stuttgart, and I’m sure she will make it all the way to Africa and back.
At 6:15 we were south of Paris and I made my first stop. We then continued for another hour to get some sleep. I set up the rooftent and tried to get some sleep, unfortunately I only slept for three hours. We filled our waterbags and tested our waterfilter and left the ‘Aire’ again.

At the Aire we’d set up the rooftent for a short nap.

The filtered water is awesome, we smelled the water before which contained chlorine but when we drank it was just perfect, no nasty tastes. This is succes number one, filtering water yourself, we save us buying bottles and we save the environment by not buying plastic bottles all the time.

At mid day we were back on the road again, we’re eating kilometers, but at a peaceful speed around 110km/h. Once in a while we see buzzards circling above the fields. Sometimes I’m listening to for example the Rolling Stones and Metalica on the Ipod while Melissa and Ramon are asleep. I enjoy the drive in the W123, the meters point to values I expect and the nice 5 ciilnder diesel runs smoothly. Not bad, 23 years old and driving like new, in fact, it is of course nearly new. In fact, I feel even more secure than being in a new plastic car, with all kind of electronics which can spoil your journey, as I found out when I drove to Sicily, Italia, in a brand new BMW cabrio and the coolfan steering unit broke down. A simple mechanic can’t help you. We ended up with a cool fan of a Fiat Uno, which was fitted badly and as a result the complete car was shaking while driving, let alone the disturbing noise. Of course this happend in a weekend of festivals on the farthest point of our trip, close to the Etna, oh well.

On the road: Nice (paid) highways in France.

Close to Bordeaux we stopped again, I was pretty tired (again) and so we had a long stop. Next time I really need to rest a bit more before departing for a long journey. After some rest we went on and passed the border of Spain in the evening, we kept on rolling..

The waterfilter is already a succes!